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Archive for the ‘Cisco’ Category

Today at Cisco we had Connected Women Leadership Forum 2010 organized by “Cisco Connected Women”. There were a lot of talks, panel discussions among a keynote address by one of the SVP’s (Senior Vice President).

A whole lot of talk surrounded around “Career” & “Career Transitions”. So, let me put together the key learnings from what i gathered today.

Career

1. The experience, the learning you have on the job counts. No job is demeaning but has lot of learnings embedded in it.

2. Work for the experience and not the Title.

3. Even if that means you have to step back in terms of a pay cut or a lower ‘title’, but if the experience is rich, go for it.

4. The SVP who gave the keynote address mentioned that she spent first 20 years of her career building the skill set & laying a solid foundation and then she accelerated. Now she’s one of the high profile executives at Cisco.

5. Every job demands one key thing – will you get the desired results ?

6. EQ matters as much as the IQ.

7. Resiliency – the attitude of “never quit” counts big time. Sometimes you are hit on the head but how you bounce back shows how resilient you are.

8. Personal commitment to work/projects. How personally committed you are to the success of the project. This doesn’t mean that you need to work long hours. It’s simply an attitude of “care” & “responsibility” towards the project. It’s an attitude of “not letting the TEAM down”.

9. Differentiate yourselves among the group. What specific value do you add and what do you bring to the table.

Some more notes: You need to have a vision, deliver growth & profits, need to believe your intuition etc…

Essence: Career is not a series of job change. It’s a marathon – a long haul.

Career Transitions

1. You need to plan & execute well defined career moves. There will be failures, or setbacks, but then you need to be resilient.

2. Do Shadowing. If you are interested in a role, identify the people who are already in that role, talk to them, shadow them, learn from their experience. And then decide, if you are fit for that role.